Statement
Of Senator Patrick Leahy
DPC Oversight Hearing
On Bush Administration Enforcement
Of The Clean Air Act
February 6, 2004
[WASHINGTON (Fri., Feb. 6) – Former EPA officials who served under
President Bush told Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Sen. Patrick Leahy
(D-Vt.) and Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) Friday that the Administration
is inadequately enforcing the Clean Air Act, allowing coal-fired
power plants and other big polluters to spew millions of tons of
mercury and other deadly poisons into the air over Vermont and other
states. The testimony came on the same day that the
Washington Post reported that the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) estimates of newborns with unsafe mercury levels in
their blood doubled to 630,000. EPA also found that one in six
pregnant women had mercury levels above EPA’s safe level. Last
December the Bush Administration announced a new emissions rule that
Leahy and Jeffords said inadequately reduces mercury emissions from
power plants, despite the EPA’s acknowledgement that mercury emitted
from coal-fired power plants poses the greatest risk to clean air
and public health. Sen. Leahy’s statement is below. Sen. Jeffords’
statement is attached as a PDF.]
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I want to start by thanking Senator
Dorgan for bringing this hearing together under difficult
circumstances. After a week wondering about the impact a toxic
chemical would have on all of our lives, I think it is appropriate
for us to end the week by talking about how other toxic pollutants
are affecting the lives of millions across the country every day.
By stealthy executive fiat, by
favoritism to powerful energy interests and big polluters in the
legislative process, and in its selections for our federal courts,
the Bush Administration has focused like a laser beam on rolling
back one of the most bipartisan environmental laws of the 20th
Century, the Clean Air Act.
This has been done at the expense of
millions of American who are at greater risk from higher levels of
exposure from smog and toxic pollutants like mercury.
These toxics cause serious health
problems such as asthma, heart disease and learning disabilities.
In today’s Post, we see that the EPA has doubled their estimate of
newborn children at risk because of high levels of mercury in their
blood. One of six pregnant women has higher mercury levels than EPA
considers safe. How can EPA move ahead with such dismal air policy
in the face of these numbers? You can’t find a more blatant example
of policy being driven by politics instead of science at EPA.
Congress should be spending more time looking at why we are bailing
out corporations with annual operating revenues in the billions and
squelching cleanup activities.
Instead, the Administration is pulling
out all the stops to rollback the Clean Air Act, putting our
children at greater risk and costing taxpayers billions of dollars
in settlement payments from giant energy corporations. The Bush
Administration has used every one of its public relations tactics --
sneaking out bad news on Fridays and around holidays, obscuring the
facts, and denying the truth – to try will prevent the American
people from noticing that they are opening enormous loopholes
throughout the Clean Air Act and handing get out of court free cards
to corporate polluters.
Just over a month ago, a court upheld
the law by blocking the implementation of the Bush Administration’s
so-called “New Source Review reforms.” These days, it seems like
the courts are the American people’s only backstop against the Bush
environmental rollbacks. The Republican Congress either turns a
blind eye to these industry favors or gives them a standing ovation.
Unfortunately, the Bush Administration
is still playing a shell game with EPA investigations of NSR
violations and playing politics with the NSR cases. The Bush
Administration lately has been trying to make itself look
“greener.”
But greenwash, like whitewash, doesn’t
stick for long.
Miraculously, after three years in
office, they have finally filed their first NSR case. That begs the
question of why the Administration has not pressed harder on the 50
pending violations stalled at EPA and numerous case referrals
sitting at the Justice Department.
It makes you wonder why they so
diligently and strategically pushed NSR changes that would undercut
their cases in court right now. One case does not make up for the
millions of pounds of toxic pollutants like mercury that will
continue to seep into our bodies and our environment because of the
Bush NSR rollback.
A year and half ago, Senator Jeffords
and I held a joint hearing of the Judiciary and Environment
Committees to get the Administration to answer some very basic
questions about how their changes to the Clean Air Act would affect
public health, current lawsuits and EPA enforcement.
They used the same tactics during that
hearing that they have for the past year to deny any public health,
environmental or legal impacts of their rollbacks. In fact, the
Administration officials flat out denied that their NSR changes
would impact pending enforcement or court cases.
We explored their misrepresentations
at nomination hearings and again all we got was denial. Their
denials are in stark contrast to the press accounts and internal
documents that clearly show the Administration’s preference for
handing out pollution pardons to industry over enforcing the law.
Unfortunately, we see the exact same
pattern with the new mercury rollback announced in December. Not
only did the Administration deny the real impacts of their mercury
proposal by ignoring their own internal analysis, but we now know
that they adopted the many parts of the industry proposal verbatim.
Today, we will hear from several
witnesses that can give us some real answers to the questions the
public is asking and that Congress should be asking about the
Administration’s attempts to gut the Clean Air Act through strokes
of their regulatory pen and through back-door scuttling of their own
legal proceedings.
# # # # #
Related Links:
Former EPA Officials Under Bush Tell Leahy And
Jeffords That White House Is Going Easy On Big Polluters
February 6, 2004
Statement Of Senator
Patrick Leahy DPC
Oversight Hearing On Bush Administration Enforcement Of The Clean
Air Act
February 6, 2004
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